Monday 24 January 2011 03.47 EST
First published on Monday 24 January 2011 03.47 EST

Toyota sold 8.42m vehicles globally in 2010, remaining the world's top automaker for the third year running despite recall woes in the key North American market.

General Motors also released a new tally for its global 2010 sales, at 8.39m vehicles, slightly fewer than Toyota's number.

Toyota's global sales, including truckmaker Hino Motors and Daihatsu Motor, which makes small cars, rose 8% from 2009, driven by solid sales growth in China and other Asian nations, the Japanese manufacturer said.

Toyota dethroned General Motors as the world's number one automaker in worldwide vehicle sales in 2008 – a position GM held for nearly eight decades. Since then, General Motors, now called General Motors Co., underwent restructuring.

George Hansen, a GM spokesman in Tokyo, played down the importance of Toyota's bigger sales numbers.

"We don't focus on who is No. 1," he said of the so-called "new GM".

Toyota also said it was not concerned with beating GM.

"Our objective is to become No. 1 with the customers," said Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco.

He said the company was doing its utmost to beef up quality. "We want to be their favourite car manufacturer."

The recalls spanned more than 10m vehicles around the world for faulty floor mats, sticky gas pedals, software glitches and other defects. The recall hit its North American market hardest.

Toyota was the only major carmaker to see its North American vehicle sales drop last year compared with the previous year. Others staged a recovery from the global financial crisis.

Toyota's North American sales last year totalled 1.94m vehicles, down 2% from 2009.

Toyota fared better in its home Japanese market, where tax breaks and government incentives for green vehicles kept sales of its Prius hybrid car booming.

The Prius ranked as Japan's top-selling car in 2010 with sales of 315,669, hitting an all-time high for any nameplate and a 51% increase from the previous year.

Toyota's sales in Japan jumped 10% last year from the previous year to 2.2m, despite a sluggish economy.

Toyota's overall overseas sales also held up, expanding 7% to 6.21m. Toyota vehicle sales jumped 19% in China and 24% in other Asian nations, according to Toyota.

Before the financial crisis and the recall fiasco, Toyota appeared unstoppable and on track to sell perhaps as many as 10m vehicles around the world a year.

Toyota has not emphasised a growth strategy as much since the recall mess. It no longer has the annual president's news conference, where global sales targets were announced with fanfare.

During the recall crisis, Toyota was criticised as being slow in responding, but its image has largely held up outside the US.

In December, Toyota agreed to pay $32.4m (£20.3m) in fines to the US government to settle the investigation into its handling of two recalls. The latest settlement was on top of the $16.4m fine Toyota paid earlier.